


Firsts/Lasts

by daisybrien



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Angst, Angst and Tragedy, Death, Denial, Denial of Feelings, F/M, M/M, Multi, Other, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-04
Updated: 2015-10-04
Packaged: 2018-04-24 18:57:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4931383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daisybrien/pseuds/daisybrien





	Firsts/Lasts

The first time he says it, he has no time to paint himself his face of cold dignity.

He wakes up the day after in a drunken mess, his hangover pressing down on him like a raincloud as he clamours from a bed of tangled sheets and sweaty bodies he doesn’t even acknowledge, doesn’t even realize is pressing around him in clinging limbs as his feet slowly dangle their way to the floor, wobbling beneath him. The floor seems to tilt under him, his arm launching out to grab the wall as he stumbles to the side; the sound of his shoulder crashing against the doorframe is deafening, sending his pounding head into spiralling pain. He can barely remember the night before - tidbits of a crowded bar float through his mind like fading photographs, Hange’s cackling laughter distant in his ear as he remembers her arm around Levi’s shoulders and him wincing in a face of annoyance, slurring swears at her in his own tipsy daze but still letting her plant a wet kiss to his cheek - but he can easily come to the conclusion that he had taken what should have been a small break of a night a little too far, the last remnants of the probable disaster he can’t recall proving themselves in what he heaves into the toilet bowl.

He presses his forehead to the cool porcelain of the seat, letting its chill soothe his tacky skin. He almost heaves again at the rancid smell coming from the toilet, spits out the last of his integrity in the form of bile into the water settled inside it. He can barely open his eyes, the dim of the room still too bright for his tired eyes, but when he peeks through the gaps of blond hair falling into his face, he sees her form leaning in the bathroom entrance. Hange does not look at him, only down her bare legs to the tiled floor.

“It’s strange,” She says. She’s disheveled from the night as well, hair a halo around her head looking like bare bramble, wearing nothing but a shirt that sags on her muscled shoulders. Bags hang under her eyes, and they do not hold the resounding mischief they usually do, no smirk on her face to mock his endearing form; instead, she looks weighted, an aura of sadness sunk into her tired face in lines of exhaustion.

“You can only say those words when you don’t mean to,” She sighs, looking at his pathetic form desperately hugging the toilet like a lover, and she turns away, sulking back into the bedroom. “I wish you didn’t have to be drunk in order to tell us that.”

* * *

 

The last time he says it, he doesn’t realize that it will be.

It is insignificant, said in the heat of the passion between working bodies; his face is in Levi’s hair, moaning in ecstasy, and this time Hange’s cries are loud in his ears as the three of them work each other to the brink. He repeats those words like a mantra, whispered feverishly as his lips drag across their hot skin in supple kisses, buries them into the crook of their necks as they pant against his cheek and run screaming lines of red down his back with their nails. They all excuse it as nothing more than a result of their mindlessness in the moment, and they leave the room in the morning and get to work like they always do, pushing back their desire behind sad eyes until one of them inevitably bursts again, needy for contact, desperate to hear those words from another no matter how much they deny it in themselves. There are much more important things that need their attention.

It is only after weeks, when he leaves for green pastures and larger dangers than a trivial romance that nags at the back of their minds, sees Hange’s lone figure hanging back to stare at the fractured pieces of a corpse that they had almost left to rot and counts his best soldier missing, that he realizes with a pang that it is too late to gives those words the sincerity that they deserved.

* * *

 

He does not say those words again. 

They pull at his chest, a never ending pain that crushes his heart as it squeezes tightly in his ribcage, bounce in his head until it is throbbing with a migraine he can’t fend off. They threaten to claw their way out of him, climbing up his tight throat and burning behind his eyelids; he stays calm, and there are no tears that stain his face, no sobs that wrack his body. 

Instead, she seems to have the words that he can’t say, says them for him in a sobbing shriek that echoes in their room and line watery streaks down her red cheeks as she curls up in his arms, rocking like a child against him. 

“I love you,” she cries, and it is only in this secrecy that she lets herself do it; they inevitably clean themselves up, sweep away the evidence of any show of weakness, straightening up their uniforms in a cold facade. But for now, he lets her break, rubs a hand against her spine as she keels over and presses her face into the bloody patch of Levi’s wings that she refused to wash, teeth grinding against the embroidery as her lips tremble around it, a forlorn cry drifting out of her that embodies the greatness of their loss.


End file.
